On Bush, Drugs and
Hypocrisyby Bob Fitrakiswww.dissidentvoice.org
April 17, 2004First Published in
The Free Press

When
President George W. Bush signed the Drug-Free Communities Act in 2002, he
asserted, "If you quit drugs, you join the fight against terror in America."
During the 2002 Superbowl, in the aftermath of 9/11, Bush's Office of
National Drug Control Policy aired two TV ads asking the simple question,
"Where do terrorists get their money?" The answer: "If you buy drugs, some
of it might come from you."

Many marijuana activists
have argued that growing your own weed is counterterrorist activity. Still,
this line of thinking concedes Bush's simple-minded assertion.

The better response to the
terrorist money question should be from Friends and Family of Bush (FOBs).
The terrorist network responsible for 9/11 was primarily financed by opium
profits from the Golden Crescent where Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran come
together. The Reagan and Bush administration policy was to allow the opium
lords to launder their drug money through the Bank of Credit and Commerce
International (BCCI) as long as some of the proceeds went to finance the
fight against the Soviet Union. Ironically, all of this is documented in a
Senate Report, "The BCCI Affair," chaired by Senator John Kerry.

The Bush family is close
friends with Texas' Bath brothers. James R. Bath was an investor in George
W.'s Arbusto Oil Company. Bath was also an investor in BCCI. The Senate
Report also documents that Sheikh Abdullah Bahksh of Saudi Arabia not only
held 16% of the stock of Harken Energy, a company that later bought up
George W.'s Spectrum 7 oil company, but also was a key investor in BCCI.
George H.W. Bush, former director of the CIA, maintained ties with BCCI
despite its narcotics trafficking during both the 1970s and 80s.

Legal documents show that
James Bath served as the U.S. business representative for Salem bin Laden,
brother of Osama, beginning in 1976, the same year that George the Elder
took over the directorship of the CIA.

So, where did the terrorist
money come from? The FOBs. A good book on the subject is False Profits: The
Inside Story of BCCI, the World's Most Corrupt Financial Empire, by Peter
Truell of the Wall Street Journal, and Larry Gurwin, award-winning business
reporter. Another resource is Chapter eleven: "Making Afghanistan Safe for
Opium" of Alexander Cockburn's and Jeffrey St. Clair's Whiteout: The CIA,
Drugs and the Press.

Cynics might sneer that
these connections are pre-1991, when Osama bin Laden broke with his CIA
allies. Yet, the Bush family's relationship with opium runners remains odd.
Initially, Bush the Younger's administration gave Afghanistan's Taliban $43
million to eradicate opium crops. The fact that the Taliban was harboring
Osama and were one of the most repressive regimes on Earth did not sit well
with critics.

Following September 11,
2001, however, the Bush administration's drug policy toward Afghanistan
changed dramatically. The UN issued a report documenting continued opium
production in Afghanistan and advised the U.S.-led coalition to act quickly
to destroy the bumper crop of opium. The UN report determined that:
"Afghanistan has been the main source of illicit opium: 70 percent of global
illicit opium production in 2000 and up to 90 percent of heroin in European
drug markets originated from Afghanistan."

"The global importance of
the ban on opium poppy cultivation and trafficking in Afghanistan is
enormous," concluded the UN report.

Charles R. Smith, writing
for NewsMax.com, reported the grumblings from anonymous sources on Capitol
Hill in late March 2002 when the Bush administration reversed its policy and
decided not to push for the destruction of Afghanistan's opium crops. The
CIA argued that the destruction of the opium crop might destabilize General
Pervez Musharraf's Pakistani government. After all, Americans wouldn't want
that.

Musharraf is everything
that Saddam longed to be, but could never accomplish. He's a military
dictator referred to by the American mainstream press as a "self-appointed"
president. He has nuclear weapons; he harbors an effective terrorist network
including Osama bin Laden and key Al Qaeda figures; he's responsible for
giving North Korea radioactive material to build their nuclear bombs; and
despite all of this, he is still a friend of the U.S. and, more importantly,
a FOB. By the way, scientists in his government offered Saddam Hussein
nuclear material, which the Iraqi leader turned down, according to The New
York Times.

Who are we to challenge the
CIA? Wasn't it necessary for them to allow their Contra allies to run
cocaine into the United States in the 1980s? Wasn't it the height of
patriotism when they allowed Air America to transport opium into U.S.
military bases in the 1960s and 70s? But all that concerned the Cold War,
national security and geopolitical strategy.

But what about the
President's own actions in the war against drugs? In 1999, our President has
steadfastly maintained that he hadn't done cocaine in the last seven years,
no wait, fifteen years, or possibly since 1974, all reported in Time
magazine. As Governor of Texas, he announced that people "need to know that
drug use has consequences." Apparently, bad memory may be one of those
consequences. As governor, Bush signed legislation that authorized judges to
sentence first-time offenders with less than a gram of cocaine to a maximum
180 days in jail instead of automatic probation.

During the height of the
notorious Blowgate scandal, George W. scrambled back to his ancestral home
in Columbus, Ohio to proclaim "I'm going to tell people I made mistakes and
that I've learned from my mistakes." His mistakes most likely cost him his
flight status in the National Guard when he failed to take a medical exam
following the military's adoption of a mandatory drug testing policy.

If hemp activists want to
stop the insane and authoritarian War on Drugs, they've got to admit their
mistakes. The movement's biggest problem appears to be lack of connections
with the CIA, bin Laden, the Bush family and other known terrorists.

Bob Fitrakis
is a Political Science Professor in the Social and Behavioral Sciences
department at Columbus State Community College, and author of The Idea of
Democratic Socialism in America and the Decline of the Socialist Party
(Garland Publishers 1993). He is the editor of The Free Press, where this
article first appeared (www.freepress.org).